The Expression of Cyclical-Universal Understanding Inherent in the Essay

The Expression of Cyclical-Universal Understanding Inherent in the Mlamadhyamakikrik by Ngrjuna - Essay Example The philosophers who ascribe to this position do so without having real proof: certainly in many cases it seems to be true that the same thing will always happen in identical conditions, say, a sound will always travel at the speed of sound through a certain medium. On the other hand, there are documented limitations to this understanding: in quantum mechanics, scientists can have exactly the same circumstances, and only predict a probability of results. They argue this away by indicating that there was probably something different in the circumstances that cannot be effectively observed, but the bottom line is that this philosophy inherently rests on an unproven assumption, without which it cannot stand. It is thus always interesting to analyze the fundamental premises on which a major work of thought is based. Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakikarik, the foundational text of â€Å"Middle Way† Buddhism, demonstrates all the hallmarks of the best Buddhist thinking: a unique com bination of logic and spirituality, a peace with subjectivity and so on. But it, like every work of philosophy, rests on an un-provable premise, without which its arguments largely fail. IN the case of Mulamadhyamakikarik, one such fundamental premise is that the universe is cyclical in nature. ... If a thing is non-existent, how could it have a condition? / if a thing is already existent, what would a condition do?† (Nagarjuna 1.6). This is essentially a play on the idea of conditional existence: obviously everything has a conditional existence (a bird would not exist if its mother did not lay an egg, for instance), and yet that conditional existence implies the possibility of the non-existence of the thing, which obviously cannot be, because the thing is. Similarly, the condition of a non-extant thing’s existence is obviously of no importance, as the thing does not exist. He then uses this comfort in comparing the conditionality of existent and non-existent things to describe how the conditionality of existence essentially negates a thing having its own essence, separate from another thing – so everything can exist, but everything that exists is essentially the same (Nagarjuna). This philosophy thus earns the name â€Å"The Middle Way† because it fo rges a practical middle road between the two extremes of Buddhist thought: that everything exists, or that nothing does. Nagarjuna’s argument that nothing has its own separate, distinct essence serves as the central argument of this work. But this essential argument rests fundamentally on the idea of a cyclical universe, something inherent to all Buddhist thinking. Nagarjuna expresses this Buddhist idea of the infinity in the opening lines of his text: â€Å"Neither from itself, nor from another, / Nor from both, / nor without a cause, / does anything whatever, anywhere arise† (Nagarjuna 1.1). This demonstrates the idea of the infinite being a circle, as opposed to an expanse as imagined in Western thought. That is, obviously things are – or at